Whether or not Bush and Cheney can, and should, be removed from office for the crimes they have committed (in particular the extrajudicial domestic wire-tapping of American citizens) is less important than that the Congress assures that these practices stop.
Clinton never admitted to lying under oath, Reagan never admitted to trading arms for hostages and knowingly diverting the money to the Contras. LBJ never admitted to faking the Gulf of Tonkin incident. George W. Bush has admitted to issuing illegal executive orders over thirty times and has pledged his determination to continue to issue more illegal executive orders. Nixon resigned, he didn’t pledge to burglarize more psychiatrist’s offices and plot to blow up more Washington thinktanks.
To deal with this problem, Harry Reid should demand another closed session of the Senate. He should then explain to the Republicans that the Senate must, on a bipartisan basis, make it clear to the President that his actions have been illegal and cannot continue. If the GOP members of the Senate do not go along with Senator Reid, he should bring all actions in the Senate to a halt. He should throw every procedural roadblock available to him in the way of anything being passed out of the Senate until Frist has to fold.
It’s a simple act. It must be done. A line in the sand has been drawn.
And we MUST demand it. Every GD representative needs to hear from us. Fax bomb their offices demanding they shut down everything and put this on the front burner where it belongs. Period. End of sentence. This could be a twofer folks. You can impeach Bush and stop Alito from getting through at the same time. It is time to shut this government run amok down…TODAY!
Look, back in the 60s, we all knew that every time we marched against the Vietnam war, they were photographing us.
One time I went to a march in Berkeley, and we could see the G-men all over the roofs with their cameras. We waved to them.
But was an awfully long time ago. And, I think, we took care of that problem. Well, until Bush came along.
Now, I get this e-mail from a friend in the Midwest. This friend is about as mainstream a Democrat as you could meet. She’s big on Kerry. To this day! She works every day, and on the weekends, she joins a little local protest against the Iraq war. She’s been doing this since, oh, 2002. She writes today:
Well, of course, wear it as a badge of honor. But taking PHOTOS of LICENSE PLATES?
What in the fuck is going on in this country? And can you imagine the MANPOWER it takes to do this useless surveillance? When our FBI and military should be taking care of the REAL bad guys?
This is scary. I used to think, the U.S. is corrupt, but it’s not the Soviet Union. I’ve been there and I can tell you, we’ve got it good here.
Then, after the Patriot Act, I thought, well, they can check our library records, but it’s still not like living under constant surveillance.
Last night, I actually thought, well, in the Soviet Union, they spied on citizens and the pulled them out of their beds in the middle of the night and executed them. At least we aren’t being pulled out of our beds and executed. (Though some -who knows who- are being sent to secret prison camps…)
I actually thought that.
Look, This is how it starts. This is how it starts.
And if you think Congress making them promise not to do it again is going to put the brakes on this insanity, you are WRONG. The kind of people who spy on their citizens, who send people to secret prison camps, who steal elections, who give us such memories as Abu Graib and Katrina … they are not going to answer to Congress.
There is only one way to stop them and that is to remove them from office.
I think it was after the London bombing that the word went around to put your contact information in your cell. Call me a cynic, but that didn’t sound to me like a smart deal to me. My insurance company has my “in case of emergency” on file.
And then I came across this:
“The C.I.A. seized the terrorists’ computers, cellphones and personal phone directories, said the officials familiar with the program. The N.S.A. surveillance was intended to exploit those numbers and addresses as quickly as possible, they said….In addition to eavesdropping on those numbers and reading e-mail messages to and from the Qaeda figures, the N.S.A. began monitoring others linked to them, creating an expanding chain. While most of the numbers and addresses were overseas, hundreds were in the United States, the officials said….Since 2002, the agency has been conducting some warrantless eavesdropping on people in the United States who are linked, even if indirectly, to suspected terrorists through the chain of phone numbers and e-mail addresses.”
You may want to rethink what it is you keep on any electronic communication device.
So from me they’d get: my home number, office, parents, a ton of DFAers (ooh, bet they’d like that!) and a ton of carry out places.
Valuable information they might glean from my cell-phone calls? I eat a lot of Thai food and am always running late.
It’s not the content, it’s the chain.
Consider this an intel version of “Send this to everyone you know” combined with the House Un-American Activities Committee gone ether. Then, throw in some Kevin Bacon for flavor.
I think it is both.
On the one hand, they want to know everyone you know and everyone those people know … ad infinitum. To create a “network.” But eventually they need to know not just who but what all these people know.
But then, it would be just like our incompetent govt. to just get a ton of phone numbers and call it a day without bothering to see what all these people are scheming up! They can’t even spy right, can they?
Story of an interim period: at one of two consecutive weekly marches against Desert Storm under Bush I, those of us marching toward the Capitol found ourselves videotaped by a young man apparently attempting to blend in with the diverse crowd of anarchists/leather-clad ACT UP members: the black leather jacket, bleached punk hair, oversize pants, combat boots, decals & stickers on the leather.
Not only did his getup seem pulled directly off the rack that morning, but the predominant decal on his jacket held an unequivocal, politically strident ultra-left message reading:
NA NA SHOES.
(a brand in similar favor as Doc Marten’s).
I don’t believe this nonsense has ever stopped; it’s only a matter of degrees of sophistication regarding method.
Looks like the long-prepared plans are being executed. I posted an entry back in May containing this quote:
So, don’t be surprised – it’s part of the grand design; the transformation of the US into an East-Germany like dictatorship. Slowly, but surely.
that impeachment hearings are not the only goal worth pursuing at this point. How exactly do you expect the Senate to “make it clear to the President that his actions have been illegal and cannot continue” short of a credible impeachment threat? Are they going to make a law that says the executive branch is not allowed to break the law? Bush has openly stated that he intends to keep breaking the law. I don’t see the middle ground: either he’s convicted and removed or nothing is done. I’d like to think otherwise, but don’t see what you have in mind. Care to elaborate?
In the meantime, there will be hearings on Alito soon. This will provide the single best opening for airing Bush’s public lawbreaking. Our senators MUST press Alito on the question: Is the president indictable for his admitted lawbreaking, or not? If Alito evades insistent, repeated questioning, he provides ample grounds for a filibuster or even a No vote in the Judiciary Committee and/or the full Senate.
I think we have to concentrate on two fronts in this fight to restore the American Republic: Massive and deep support for the move by Barbara Boxer and a few others to begin considering impeachment; and using the Alito hearings to take the case to the public in a way the media cannot ignore or soft peddle.
I have been supporting impeachment for months.
But we have to move public opinion to that conclusion in such a massive way that idiots like Sensenbrenner are forced to move.
Sensenbrenner is such a hard nut to crack, that we cannot start there. We must start in the Senate.
In the Senate the Democrats have the power to obstruct. And Reid should go behind closed doors and lay it on the line. He should say that the President has committed high crimes and misdemeanors and we all know it. And, he should say, that there is no way the Senate is going to conduct business as usual until the Senate as a bloc stands up to the President and insists on the termination of this NSA program.
If the GOP doesn’t back down then the resulting gridlock will force the story into every living room every night. And the GOP cannot win this argument in American living rooms. So, I think this gambit would work to protect our 4th amendment rights.
I really hope the fact finding can drag on past next January. So that Bush & Chaney can be replaced by Democrats instead of Thugs.
But at this rate, I’d be surprised if they can hold out till summer.
Their house of cards is collapsing.
Now we know why Bush was hellbent on pushing Miers through to the SCOTUS and then I bet Abu Gonzales was next. Stack the court. As I wrote in a comment last night. The Dems should do anything in their power to stop anything and everything that Bush tries to do. He is a Criminal. We have a sitting President who has admitted to breaking the law and shiting on the Constitution. If the Senators cannot put a stop to this bullshit then we have lost our Democracy. These are some of the darkest days America has ever seen.
Rep. Conyers is on the case. As always. Conyers is the Ranking Member on the all-important House Judiciary Committee.
Wonderful graphic, JS. Unfortunately, he rushes to his labors alone.
What on earth is going on? And how is it being done?
There has been some speculation in the blogsphere that a different method of surveillance is being used by NASA, involving the gathering of massive amounts of information on many people. If true, any court system approached to authorize warrants – even after the fact – would be overwhelmed. Is this the “efficiency” argument now being used to justify not seeking warrants?
I wonder if it is “Echelon”? Google “echelon” for the details of this international espionage program.
EVERY email and EVERY phone call by ALL Americans could be scrutinized by that program, 24/7.
Wasn’t one of the Administration’s excuses for not having the intelligence (ahem) to learn of the 9-11 plot the fact that they had TOO MUCH intelligence, that it was time consuming, if not impossible to sort through it all?
I don’t believe it is “Echelon”. If they used this program they would have to advise the UK and other countrys’ in it.
Since Bush$CO are adamant about bypassing the FISA Court, it seems they would have been covertly spying on people like Democrats, Senators, Members of Congress, Political enemies, Journalists and others they could never get a warrant for. This I believe is what they fear becoming public. They could care less if every spy agency in the world had info on us ordinary citizens or Bloggers.
Booman, I think you are dead on. Basically, Harry Reid needs to close down the Senate until this country starts behaving like a representative democracy again. The American people need to be reminded that we’ve fought WARS over stuff like the suspension of habeus corpus.
Go back and re-read the Declaration of Independence. Then look at how many of the things George III was accused of doing are going on in the United States of America, right now.
There are important things going on right now. Maria Cantwell is getting ready to filibuster over the inclusion of ANWR drilling provisions in the defense budget. John Conyers, for some reason, is caving in to special interests in the entertainment and broadcast industries to force odious hardware-based copyright enforcement mechanisms into consumer electronics products, and needs to hear from people who enjoy having their computers and VCRs and TiVos and iPods and making fair use of entertainment they’ve legally obtained. But none of that is really important unless we can get George Bush reined in and preferably out of office, because if he can suspend habeus corpus and order illegal surveillance on a whim, what’s to stop him from declaring libraries a threat to national security, or ordering all Muslims in this country to wear burkas and burnooses, or to unilaterally order drilling in ANWR or any other thing his pointy little head comes up with, and have it pushed through by fiat?
I got involved in politics because I came to the realization that Bush is a menace and needs to be put out of office. I came to that realization a year or two ago. I just hope everyone else in this country is starting to see why.
Make sure you check out this diary by ghandi with a link to a video showing George’s blatant hypocrisy on this issue.
Busted!
I’d support that. Shut down the Senate, shut down the House.
If every Dem just went home right now and refused to show up to vote for anything, would that accomplish it?
I said Impeach in that earlier little rant. But I also realize that even impeachment will not remove him from office. It is just a slap in his face.
But the court case that would have to follow… That would be a laugh.
Impeached for a felony? That has instant lame duck written all over it. And republicans thought Clinton’s impeachment sucked? lol
I agree-the line in the sand must be drawn NOW!
In thinking and reading about this I came up with an idea. NSA is part of the Department of Defense. They have a HUGE budget – and its OUR money. In following legal discussions over at the orange place the possibility of ALL of us using FOIA has come up. ACLU will not get involved at the early stages unless our FOIA requests are refused.
The sticking point is that the DodD has made it expensive to obtain our own information-I’ll post links below. Now I have a situation where I cannot realistically work until early next summer at best. So I decided to call my Senators, Harry Reid, Carl Levin and Russ Feingold. My argument was simple:
WHY should taxpayers have to pay what could be thousands of dollars for a FOIA request, to find out if our rights as citizens have been violated by criminal actions of our own government? Then I pointed out that millions of us wished to do so, but like myself, many cannot afford it. Would the Senator consider legislation so that fees would be waived for any citizen filing FOIA’s to see if NSA had spied on them?
Senators Kennedy, Levin, Feingold and Reid persons thought this a worth while Idea to pass up to the Senators. Kerry’s person was rude, abrupt, and I’m not sure if there would be any action from his office.
Bottom Line: What if millions of us fax bombed, and called the local and Washington offices of our Representatives and Senators over the holiday break? All asking for legislation to waive NSA FOIA fees to see if we were spied on. Then those of us with NSA files could join with other Blogs and ask the ACLU to file the largest law suit in history against the Defense Department. The sheer number of requests, and the resulting suit would keep the spying in front of the public and our Congress people for a long time to come.
Now I am not a lawyer. Boston Joe, any other lawyers do you see legal obstacles to this? Everyone else what do you think of the idea???
The relevant part of the U.S. Code regarding fees generally, is below, and here are the applicable Department of Defense Regulations Perhaps lawyers may help make this into simple English. However it seems to me that the more they have on you the more expensive it gets.
under 5 U.S.C. 522(a)(4)
(A) (i) In order to carry out the provisions of this section, each agency shall promulgate regulations, pursuant to notice and receipt of public comment, specifying the schedule of fees applicable to the processing of requests under this section and establishing procedures and guidelines for determining when such fees should be waived or reduced. Such schedule shall conform to the guidelines which shall be promulgated, pursuant to notice and receipt of public comment, by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and which shall provide for a uniform schedule of fees for all agencies.
(ii) Such agency regulations shall provide that–
(I) fees shall be limited to reasonable standard charges for document search, duplication, and review, when records are requested for commercial use;
(II) fees shall be limited to reasonable standard charges for document duplication when records are not sought for commercial use and the request is made by an educational or noncommercial scientific institution, whose purpose is scholarly or scientific research; or a representative of the news media; and
(III) for any request not described in (I) or (II), fees shall be limited to reasonable standard charges for document search and duplication.
(iii) Documents shall be furnished without any charge or at a charge reduced below the fees established under clause (ii) if disclosure of the information is in the public interest because it is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government and is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requester.
(iv) Fee schedules shall provide for the recovery of only the direct costs of search, duplication, or review. Review costs shall include only the direct costs incurred during the initial examination of a document for the purposes of determining whether the documents must be disclosed under this section and for the purposes of withholding any portions exempt from disclosure under this section. Review costs may not include any costs incurred in resolving issues of law or policy that may be raised in the course of processing a request under this section. No fee may be charged by any agency under this section–
(I) if the costs of routine collection and processing of the fee are likely to equal or exceed the amount of the fee; or
(II) for any request described in clause (ii)(II) or (III) of this subparagraph for the first two hours of search time or for the first one hundred pages of duplication.
(v) No agency may require advance payment of any fee unless the requester has previously failed to pay fees in a timely fashion, or the agency has determined that the fee will exceed $ 250.
(vi) Nothing in this subparagraph shall supersede fees chargeable under a statute specifically providing for setting the level of fees for particular types of records.
(vii) In any action by a requester regarding the waiver of fees under this section, the court shall determine the matter de novo: Provided, That the court’s review of the matter shall be limited to the record before the agency.
(B) On complaint, the district court of the United States in the district in which the complainant resides, or has his principal place of business, or in which the agency records are situated, or in the District of Columbia, has jurisdiction to enjoin the agency from withholding agency records and to order the production of any agency records improperly withheld from the complainant. In such a case the court shall determine the matter de novo, and may examine the contents of such agency records in camera to determine whether such records or any part thereof shall be withheld under any of the exemptions set forth in subsection (b) of this section, and the burden is on the agency to sustain its action. In addition to any other matters to which a court accords substantial weight, a court shall accord substantial weight to an affidavit of an agency concerning the agency’s determination as to technical feasibility under paragraph (2)(C) and subsection (b) and reproducibility under paragraph (3)(B).
(C) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the defendant shall serve an answer or otherwise plead to any complaint made under this subsection within thirty days after service upon the defendant of the pleading in which such complaint is made, unless the court otherwise directs for good cause shown.
(D) [Repealed]
(E) The court may assess against the United States reasonable attorney fees and other litigation costs reasonably incurred in any case under this section in which the complainant has substantially prevailed.
(F) Whenever the court orders the production of any agency records improperly withheld from the complainant and assesses against the United States reasonable attorney fees and other litigation costs, and the court additionally issues a written finding that the circumstances surrounding the withholding raise questions whether agency personnel acted arbitrarily or capriciously with respect to the withholding, the Special Counsel shall promptly initiate a proceeding to determine whether disciplinary action is warranted against the officer or employee who was primarily responsible for the withholding. The Special Counsel, after investigation and consideration of the evidence submitted, shall submit his findings and recommendations to the administrative authority of the agency concerned and shall send copies of the findings and recommendations to the officer or employee or his representative. The administrative authority shall take the corrective action that the Special Counsel recommends.
(G) In the event of noncompliance with the order of the court, the district court may punish for contempt the responsible employee, and in the case of a uniformed service, the responsible member.
I think it is an excellent idea.